3 ms·

Cancer reproducibility project scales back ambitions

3 points by nonbel 11y ago

nonbel 11y ago
In case anyone was curious about this part: >"Critics have dismissed the cancer-study endeavour as time-consuming, out-of-touch with the realities of basic science and unlikely to produce interpretable results. “It’s a naÏveté that by simply embracing this ethic, which sounds eminently reasonable, that one can clean out the Augean stables of science,” says Robert Weinberg, a cancer biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts." http://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/06/cancer-research-retraction-is-fifth-for-robert-weinberg-fourth-for-his-former-student/ http://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/06/cancer-research-retrac...
deleted 11y ago
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danieltillett 11y ago
Sad that the only reason they have had to scale back is a lack of funding. As someone as former insider this work is needed more than ever.
- nonbel 11y ago
  I actually found more detail was published over the summer.[1] It sounds like getting the necessary information for the replications was surprisingly difficult and this drained the funds. Also, people are leaving the project because they deem the papers too flawed to be worth replicating. This makes it sound like it's turning into a fiasco. Universities putting up legal obstacles to replications, etc: "Early on, Begley, who had raised some of the initial objections about irreproducible papers, became disenchanted. He says some of the papers chosen have such serious flaws, such as a lack of appropriate controls, that attempting to replicate them is “a complete waste of time.” He stepped down from the project's advisory board last year. Amassing all the information needed to replicate an experiment and even figure out how many animals to use proved “more complex and time-consuming than we ever imagined,” Iorns says. Principal investigators had to dig up notebooks and raw data files and track down long-gone postdocs and graduate students, and the project became mired in working out material transfer agreements with universities to share plasmids, cell lines, and mice. [...] ALTHOUGH ERRINGTON SAYS many labs have been “excited” and happy to participate, that is not what Science learned in interviews with about one-fourth of the principal investigators on the 50 papers. Many say the project has been a significant intrusion on their lab's time—typically 20, 30, or more emails over many months and the equivalent of up to 2 weeks of full-time work by a graduate student to fill in protocol details and get information from collaborators. Errington concedes that a few groups have balked and stopped communicating, at least temporarily." [1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411

3 points by nonbel 11y ago

In case anyone was curious about this part: >"Critics have dismissed the cancer-study endeavour as time-consuming, out-of-touch with the realities of basic science and unlikely to produce interpretable results. “It’s a naÏveté that by simply embracing this ethic, which sounds eminently reasonable, that one can clean out the Augean stables of science,” says Robert Weinberg, a cancer biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts." http://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/06/cancer-research-retraction-is-fifth-for-robert-weinberg-fourth-for-his-former-student/ http://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/06/cancer-research-retrac...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

danieltillett 11y ago

Sad that the only reason they have had to scale back is a lack of funding. As someone as former insider this work is needed more than ever.

nonbel 11y ago
I actually found more detail was published over the summer.[1] It sounds like getting the necessary information for the replications was surprisingly difficult and this drained the funds. Also, people are leaving the project because they deem the papers too flawed to be worth replicating. This makes it sound like it's turning into a fiasco. Universities putting up legal obstacles to replications, etc: "Early on, Begley, who had raised some of the initial objections about irreproducible papers, became disenchanted. He says some of the papers chosen have such serious flaws, such as a lack of appropriate controls, that attempting to replicate them is “a complete waste of time.” He stepped down from the project's advisory board last year. Amassing all the information needed to replicate an experiment and even figure out how many animals to use proved “more complex and time-consuming than we ever imagined,” Iorns says. Principal investigators had to dig up notebooks and raw data files and track down long-gone postdocs and graduate students, and the project became mired in working out material transfer agreements with universities to share plasmids, cell lines, and mice. [...] ALTHOUGH ERRINGTON SAYS many labs have been “excited” and happy to participate, that is not what Science learned in interviews with about one-fourth of the principal investigators on the 50 papers. Many say the project has been a significant intrusion on their lab's time—typically 20, 30, or more emails over many months and the equivalent of up to 2 weeks of full-time work by a graduate student to fill in protocol details and get information from collaborators. Errington concedes that a few groups have balked and stopped communicating, at least temporarily." [1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6242/1411